Swift's A modest proposal in the pragmatics of irony: echoic mention and pretense approaches

Abstract

One of the basic controversics within pragmatic approaches to the study of irony dwells upon whether ít entails either pretense or echoic mention. The approach to irony as pretense goes back to sorne of the very earliest pro­posals (Arislotle). However, we shall that thetermpretense and its implications for the interpretation ofirony have not always bcen understood in the same way. As noted above, in more recent times, pretense theorists (Clark and Gerrig, 1984) and mention approaches (Sperber and Wilson 1998, 1992 (1990), 1986195, 1981, 1978; Sperber 1984; Jorgensen et al. 1984; Jorgensen 1996) have attempted to explain irony from a pragmatic perspective. Interestingly enough, their debate has focused on a specific corpus, Swift's ‘A Modest Proposal’, and has expanded until relatively recent (Kreu7, Roger 2000; Link 2000; Attardo 2001, 2000).

This present paper aim to examine the implications that the consideration of this corpus may have for this issue and will assess the contributions that may be offered by both approaches. The analysis will also consider the applications that corpus linguistics may hace for the analysis of irony from a pragmatic standpoint and the necessity to combine both the survey of the instances considered with the context where they appear.